


I See Fire

by Accidentallytechohazardous



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Catching Fire Spoilers, Crossover, Dissociation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Off-Screen Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:12:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3922426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accidentallytechohazardous/pseuds/Accidentallytechohazardous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being rescued from the Capitol, the Victors from the past years’ Hunger Games live in hiding to assist the rebellion. Shuuhei can’t find himself among his memories anymore, and maybe here isn’t the ideal place to look for them either.</p>
<p>
  <i>If we burn tonight, then we should all burn together</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Raise a glass of wine for the last time. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	I See Fire

“So what was your arena like?”

The question catches Shuuhei, stops his hands where they’re crossing the wires like strands of a spider web inside a smooth metal shell that will unwrap as if it were tinfoil when the counter goes off. His fingers smell like gunpowder, gray dirge caked under his fingernails from restocking the ammo.

Renji wheels around a chair and sits backwards on it, arms folded over the top and create a wall from which he can leer at Shuuhei over, one part defensive and two parts curious. “Well?” He drives. “You were year 70, right? They never talked ‘bout the designs before the 72nd. Somethin’ must’ve really gone wrong. Why so quiet, they make you swear to keep your piece?”

The last sentence drops off in a scathing sneer, which is in line with a lot of things Renji says, all back-handed remarks under a curled lip and black-beetle eyes. Looking for a fight. Or at least looking for some kind of interaction or another.

Shuuhei turns the capsule over in one hand, not entirely happy with the seal. He’s done much better, but that was when the explosions were as much for show as they were for demolition. Good TV made for generous sponsors. The other tightens into a fist pressed into his chin, giving Renji a bored look under hooded eyes. “Why? Are you too young to remember. I mean, you are like thirteen, aren’t you?”

“I’m seventeen.”

“-I don’t care.” Shuuhei drops the bomb on the desk with the slap of metal on metal that makes Renji jump and his eyes go wide. Regardless of whether he saw Shuuhei’s games, footage of his claim to fame must be hard to avoid plastered over holo-screens in showers of oranges and yellows and reds. He’s right to be wary. “Now I got a lot of work to do here. You can either make yourself useful or leave me alone.”

That scowl on Renji’s broad face deepens, and for a moment Shuuhei thinks he might pick the former option just to prove a point. For as many weeks as the tributes have been rattling around in this oversized bunker of a base, he wouldn’t be surprised if ones like Renji were itching to pick up a weapon just finally do something. To train with it or to repair it or to upgrade it. Anything. Just to feel like they could.

But in the same motion that Renji stands up, he kicks the chair to the side where it wheels into the desk with a dismissive grunt. Shuuhei chooses looking back down at his next capsule in favor of watching Renji’s back as he adjusts his grey army jacket with an unimpressive air of ‘we’re done here’ and stomping out of the weapon’s room with big heavy boot stops.

Renji is hardly the eldest tribute to make Division 13 their reluctant home, but he’s been a member of the resistance longer than Shuuhei has. The older boy can remember not that far back, when the rebellion was barely a blink in the corner of his homeland’s eye and the resistance managed to slip some illegal footage of the war onto the holo-screen. That was the first time anybody had heard of or seen Renji Abarai in a full year since his victory in the 73rd Hunger Game.

Even just shy of seventeen, Renji was an ideal icon of the righteous fury that the rebellion wanted to be. Footage of this teenaged boy- this literal child sabotaging the engine for a supply shuttle going into the Capitol, demolishing Panem technology and resources like it was kindling. A skillful close up on his face smeared with ashes and soot, eyes tinted a painful red either from rage or the smoke, mid-bellow the Districts’ vengeful mantra; “If we burn, you burn with us!”

Shuuhei isn’t sure whether he’s disappointed or relieved to learn that demonic force is just a kid after all. No different from the rest of them.

-

All in all, the District Thirteen isn’t a terrible place to live. Of course, it’s nothing like back home in Nine. Trips to the surface are few and far between, whether its for recon or to aid the district rebellion stations in the farther districts.

Everything above Thirteen is wasteland and dust. No rolling hills of wheat. No silos splitting out of the dirt, metal domes catching a naked sun and blasting it onto the yellow ground. No grain processing factories lining the distance, with smokestacks jutting into the sky like skeletal fingers breaking through from the bottom of the earth. Nine wasn’t pretty, or even likable. It leaves a sour taste that he can’t quite explain in Shuuhei’s mouth to admit this, but he liked the place a lot better after moving into the Victor’s Village where he could spend his days living in a mansion and sitting pretty for camera crews instead of going back to his old, insufferable job in the fields. But it is still home.  
Was still home. In case Shuuhei ever gets the opportunity to go back. In case there’s a place to go back to, when all this is said and done. In case this isn’t ever gonna really be all said and done.

Rangiku is one of the few former tributes Shuuhei managed to befriend, though if her stats in the 68th Games are anything to go off of than Rangiku is rarely in short supply of a friend when she needs or wants one. Shuuhei wonders if the reason she took to him is because they’re closer in age, or maybe just in location.

“That was the worst thing about making entrances and interviews.” She said one day in the canteen at dinner, working a shapeless unit of protein onto her fork. “People’d always mix us up with the Ninth District. Can’t really blame them. Livestock versus harvest- who has the effort to care?”

“Still,” Hinamori would mumble around a piece of stale bread across from her, showing the rare bit of ire in her that she typically saved for the Capitol. “You’d think they’d at least pretend to actually care about us as individuals.”

“They do pretend to care.” Shuuhei points out, and it feels strange to speak up about the subject. Like there’s a hollow box in his throat he has to speak around. Like he’s leaning into a microphone just to be heard in the crowded mess hall even though more than enough people have put their lives on the line to get him here. “The problem in the first place is that they pretend.”

Rangiku makes a flippant gesture in the air, like she’s plucking something with her fingers. When she was on TV, every nail was finely painted wine red and shaped to perfection. Her skin seemed to glow when blasted by the projectors, and Shuuhei can entirely understand why people would have a hard time connecting that this woman was from the Ten of all places and not bred in a palace. Now the callouses on her hands are visible without editing and make-up. The hair-line scars up her arms and creeping out over her collarbone leap at his eyes with startling clarity. She’s all clawed up and toughened up.

“They don’t really.” She says, tone matter-of-fact. “All the dressing up and the acting nice for the crowds- they know it’s a lie. They all know you’re expendable and they want you to know it too. The whole point of the games is to tell you that you’re expendable. Thing is that nobody wants to admit it out loud in the open because that spoils people’s appetites.”

There’s something in the way she says that. ‘You’ and not ‘we.’ ‘You’ are expendable.

Rangiku is young, but not too young. She’s also the only victor Shuuhei knows from Ten. She was probably a mentor to later tributes before Thirteen found her.  
Knowing that, Shuuhei finds it eerily surprising that there aren’t more Ten victors.

“This sounds like a nice conversation.” A voice appears behind Shuuhei, apparently out of nowhere, but as Shuuhei turns to look suddenly a boy has melted out of the shadows to sit next to Rangiku with a sparse tray that clatters lightly against the table.

“Izuru, for example.” Rangiku beams at Shuuhei and gestures towards this kid who Shuuhei recognizes as a former tribute but not from watching him on the screens. He must be from a more recent Game, closer to Renji’s year, though that’s where the similarities end. Izuru Kira, Third District.

“What am I an example for?” Izuru slides food around his plate with disinterest. Most things, it seems, don’t hold Izuru’s interest for very long. Food. Objects. Plans. People. Blue eyes under pale lashes roll upwards to land on Shuuhei’s face, barely hesitating before rolling on.

“How the Capitol tried to make you appealing to the public.” Rangiku props her chin on her hands and smiles fondly at him. “Key word being ‘tried.’”

Izuru frowns at that, eyebrows tense like he wants to make the smart move and not risk disagreeing with her. “By their standards, I guess I was appealing for a while. Then again, I suppose the crowd always loves an underdog. It’s not so bad to be counted out.”

“You weren’t supposed to win?” Shuuhei asks, folding his arms over table, and Izuru looks at him a second time.

“Were you supposed to win?”

“No.” Shuuhei admits, thinking back on his stats during training. He wasn’t given any particularly favorable rank, as his years of wisdom at harvesting grain hadn’t been generous in a survival setting. It was only thanks to Kensei’s efforts to show off Shuuhei’s strong suits that he squeaked out with a just barely adequate score. He was a flop at interviews as well, though Mashiro was convinced that Shuuhei could spin himself as ‘endearing’ instead of ‘I-am-terrified-and-about-to-die.’ “Not initially.”

“So what changed?”

What changed, indeed. Shuuhei feels his right side tingle. A full-body burn that starts from behind his eye. His ear rings, high and furious. Like the sound of a distant scream across miles and miles. Shuuhei’s mouth is full of venom and smoke and spite when he answers. “My winning personality.”

For a split second, something flashes across Izuru’s face. Like a string in the back of his neck being yanked, and thin lips turn upwards before regaining control. “What a coincidence. Mine, too.”

-

Out of all his least favorite parts of being involved in this stupid war (there are a lot of them) the raids might not be the part he hates the most but they’re really high up there.  
The red lights burst over the gray walls and ceiling, bathing everything in a hellish flashing glow. Warning everyone, anyone who would listen: This is not a drill. Return to your designated stations and remain calm. This is not a drill. Return to your designated stations and remain calm-

Which is fine by him, really. Shuuhei wasn’t planning on sleeping, anyways. This hollow little log of a bunk shared between him and a handful of other ‘guests’ of the resistance that he is forced to lie in for at least six hours so that nobody worries that he’ll keel over from exhaustion is not really as comforting as locals of Thirteen seem to believe it is.  
No, the parts that are the worst are when the bombs drop.

They called Shuuhei a lot of things for what he did in the Games. ‘Pyromaniac’ not least among them but certainly the most incorrect. ‘Mass murderer’ was a more accurate one. ‘Self-destructive’, if the tabloids wanted to get deep on him, and they’d include a big photo of Shuuhei that they ‘somehow’ obtained after the Games when he was still in recovery. A glossy polaroid of him lying passed out in a hospital bed with his face half-melting off like wet clay. Panem’s next Celebrity Crush. This year’s Darling of the Capitol.  
Shuuhei’s eyes- Shuuhei’s eye shuts against the warning lights. His fingers go up to his cheek and gingerly poke around. Checking that he’s still there. That all this is real. The Games weren’t some horrible nightmare and he’s not really locked in a metal box hundreds of feet below the ground while hellfire rains down from above. Maybe nobody’s ever tried to kill him or manipulate him or exploit him for their cause.

His skin on his cheek and over his eye still feels tender and raw. It’s rippled and ridged under his touch like a mountain range on a map. The kind of damage that not even all the facial reconstruction in the world could undo. Shuuhei’s finest and greatest and ugliest “Fuck you” to the people who locked him in that death pit. They wanted a face for their beloved victor of the year? They sure got one. They got one that they’re not gonna be able to forget soon, all over their media and their posters and at their stupid publicity stunts.  
The first bomb drops. The sirens are deafened. Without meaning to, Shuuhei remembers a time when he was fourteen and scared and his hands were caked in yellow dust that he was trying not to inhale and the little match they dropped from the package with the parachute was in his hands and he just wanted to go home. Twenty-one other kids who wouldn’t.

Renji wakes up yelling and gasping, but he does that even when there isn’t a raid going on. Shuuhei opens his eyes and looks to the bed nailed to the opposite side of the room, and watching Renji shudder with the pillow pressed to his face the muscles in his arms and fingers clenched like a full-body fist is unsettling enough even without the muffled scream.

Popular rumor says that in Renji’s homeland of District Six, there’s a serious substance abuse problem. Victors from Six are infamous for addiction and self-medicating scandals that fuel the media in the Capitol like gasoline on an oil fire. Shuuhei, who hasn’t been well-rested for at least several years, isn’t in much of a place to wonder what certain people have to do to be able to sleep at night.

There’s something else on Renji’s bunk, too. A shape crouched in the corner of the mattress, back pressed up against the wall like he wants to sink into it. Izuru having apparently slipped out of his own bed to perch on the edge of Renji’s bunk. The lights continue to flash and it turns Izuru’s hair from a muted gray in the darkness to a violent orange, it stretches over his black sleeping clothes in dark red streaks. He’s all bony knees and gangly arms folding in on himself, pulled up to his chest and hiding his face.  
Another boom from above and the sirens go out. The lights are still flashing but it’s deathly quiet all but for the tremors of what could be the earth splitting piece by piece for all the information that is available to them. Shuuhei doesn’t know what that means.

And now it’s the waiting game. Will the flashing lights go off? Will they have to move into the reinforced panic rooms even deeper below ground? Will the roof cave in over their heads and they will perish horribly? There’s only one way to find out.

Personally, though, Shuuhei thinks he’d like the option where they survive best of all of them. That seems like an obvious choice. It’s not. He hears many stories of people dying heroically. Sacrificing themselves for the cause or for loved ones or for strangers. Being martyrs. Even just looking for the last way out when they’ve had enough of this bullshit, fighting against a hundred-headed beast and against themselves finally becoming too much. Shuuhei doesn’t want to be heroic, he just wants to live.

What seems like an hour passes, but it could have only been a few minutes. His eyes hurt from the lights. Izuru doesn’t move except as the mattress shifts under him from Renji’s occasional convulsions. Finally, Shuuhei breaks the silence.

“You’re not supposed to share bunks.”

“I’m not.” Izuru snaps right away, unwrapping himself enough to mutter through his sleeves. “Just sitting here for a minute.”

“Why?”

“It helps him sleep.”

“Bullshit liar.” Renji rasps, rolling onto his side that he’s facing the wall away from them. “Helps you sleep.”

“Helps me sleep.” Izuru admits. Shuuhei wonders about him. Both of them. Izuru Kira. District Three. Technology. Rumored to have killed his competitors by beheading. Renji Abarai. District Six. Transportation. Notable destructive Anarchist. They’re just kids.

Shuuhei Hisagi. District Nine. Harvesting. Ticking time-bomb. They’re all just kids.

What is he supposed to say? Everything will be all right? Nothing is right here. He could roll over and try to go back to sleep. They’re just stupid kids.  
The floor is cold underneath his feet. Everything in here is metal and impersonal and distant and he feels distant, but feeling the cold under his feet is better than feeling the burning behind his eye.

The mattress dips underneath him, getting both Renji and Izuru’s attention. Shuuhei squeezes himself between Izuru’s shoulder and Renji’s feet so he can lean his back against the wall, too.

It’s been a pretty long time since he was close to another person without remembering the swamp where they dropped him off on the first day of the Hunger Games. Going to sleep every night, wondering if he was going to wake up to see someone standing over him about to slit his throat. Wondering if he really should have lit that match.  
“You don’t have to do this.” Izuru’s voice brings him back. It echoes across Shuuhei’s mind and he’s here again. With his body, where he’s supposed to be.

“Everything will be alright.” Shuuhei leans his shoulder against Izuru’s for no other reason than because he can and because Izuru let’s him. “I’m just gonna sleep right here.”

More time that could be hours or minutes pass. The lights continue to give Shuuhei a headache until his skull aches and eventually feels numb like novacaine. Izuru’s body slides against him and eventually he’s leaning in, not unburying himself from the safety of his sweatshirt but burrowing deeper into Shuuhei’s sleeve. Shuuhei feels Renji’s knee bonk against his hip, looking for contact. Shuuhei bonks back with his thigh. ‘I’m still here.’ Who knows for how long but he’s still here.


End file.
